Tonight, some students will choose to take advantage of the new option to live with members of the opposite sex on campus.
The gender-neutral housing option, which was approved by Residence Life and Housing Services in the Fall, allows students of different genders to share the same suite or apartment. A total of 18 students are opting into gender-neutral housing for the 2011-2012 academic year, M.J. Williams, director of housing accommodations, administration and finance for RLHS, wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.
The policy is indicative of a changing social culture and the University’s ability to recognize and respond to the needs of students, said Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek.
“I think if you had asked me 20 years ago if Duke would move in this direction, I wouldn’t have imagined that it would,” Wasiolek said.
Many of Duke’s peer institutions—including the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College and Yale University—offer some form of gender-neutral housing.
Students living in the gender-neutral option will be housed on Central Campus and able to choose from two-bedroom suites and four-person apartments during RoomPix Thursday night, Williams added. There are no restrictions on class years of roommate pairs, though groups selecting three-bedroom apartments are limited to a block consisting of one same-gender roommate pair and one mixed gender pair.
Campus Council voted unanimously Oct. 21 to recommend the gender-neutral option to RLHS after a survey about the policy was sent to the student body. The majority of the students who took the survey either agreed with or were impartial to the gender-neutral housing policy, according to the Campus Council presentation given in October.
Blue Devils United President Ollie Wilson, a junior, said he thinks the University’s strides to provide more accommodating housing arrangements for students is a good start to a program he hopes will expand in the future.
“Having more options, especially in the housing model, is always a good thing,” he said. “Everyone is different, and there are people with different needs or preferences.”
Wasiolek added that the University is “approaching gender-neutral housing in the right way.” Locating the housing option on a small part of Central for its inaugural year will allow the University to be sensitive and aware of what students want in the future, she noted.
Williams said although students have been “very receptive” to the new housing option, RLHS has received several questions about whether the program will remain opt-in only and if it would be extended to East Campus. RLHS also encouraged students who plan to participate in gender-neutral housing to have a discussion with their parent or guardian about their housing choice, she added.
In addition, RLHS is offering co-ed housing space—defined as same-sex roommate pairs living next to pairs of the opposite gender—on West Campus. These rooms will be available during the single-room and double-room selection windows of RoomPix and offer single-sex bathrooms, though some sections offer bathrooms without gender designation. This co-ed housing option, formerly referred to as gender-neutral, was established three years ago to accommodate transgender students, Williams said. Campus Council also recommended its continuation in October.
RLHS will not know the number of students selecting co-ed housing until the completion of RoomPix, Williams noted. Students desiring to live in co-ed housing will be accommodated on the third floor of Kilgo Quadrangle’s Houses O and P, the basement of Few Quadrangle’s Houses GG and HH and the fourth floor of Keohane Quadrangle 4B, she added.
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